If you have interest in drawing things with a sense of mass and construction, which it seems like you do, download Fun With a Pencil by Andrew Loomis. It’s free. There’s like three racism caricatures because it’s from the 30s, so trigger warning in that, but other than that it’s very useful for training your brain to perceive mass and think in 3D. Don’t front through the book. Do an exercise then do something fun that’s sort inspired by that exercise, then when you feel ready do the next exercise.

How can I incorporate the things I like about others' art into my own? Do I just straight up try to copy them

Yes it’s called a study. You copy it as closely as you can and then later your hand remembers certain things from it. The more you copy the more your hand remembers. This applies to all things drawn from observation. Draw enough horse skulls and, when given a blank piece of paper and no inspiration, your hand will naturally want to draw a horse skull.

Also try to draw with your elbow and shoulder, not just your wrist.

Nothing wrong with making funky sketches that are just kind of abstract expressions, you say you're not good at self expression, but these feel like really good examples of self expression. You don't need to be "good" at art to still enjoy doing it. In fact, I'd recommend against just trying to get good for the sake of it, you'll enjoy art a lot more as self expression, as just a fun hobby rather than trying to turn it into a career or something more serious. If you just draw for fun you will get better, though slowly.

I think you need to ask yourself what "better" actually means for you and what you're trying to accomplish by getting "better". All of these pieces look fine to me, not saying you shouldn't want to improve, but "better" is always relative. As someone who has done art professionally for years, it's never good enough, you'll always feel like your art is not quite right and there will always be something "better" out there. There'll always be mistakes and things that don't look good to you. The trick is to just make peace with that uncomfortable feeling and not let it hold you back.

All that said, if you do just want to improve on a technical level, getting good is unfortunately just practice. Specifically, practicing drawing from real life. There's a reason that first year art students learn to draw a lot of still life pictures and draw live models. You need to know the "rules" of what things look like in order to "break" those rules better. You can draw an abstract or cartoony human face much more easily if you know how a realistic face is put together. You need to learn how to break things down into parts so you can "reassemble" them in the way you want. Practice drawing things in your environment, or use a photo of a person as a reference. If you really want, most towns and cities do have art modelling sessions that you can go to and just sketch a random person (they usually cost money though).

This just takes time, the more you practice the better you get. And it isn't fun, it's specifically drawing things you don't really want to so you can get better at drawing the things you do want to. And it won't feel relevant while you're doing it either, it'll feel kind of like a waste of time sometimes, and it will look awful, especially at first, but that's ok, it's practice, it isn't about making it look good, it's about learning and getting better at the skill, understanding how things fit together and how you can put them together in the way you want.

To answer your specific questions at the end:

What should I spend my extremely limited practice time on?

Whatever you want! Draw for fun if you want, practice drawing things around you if you want instead, don't try to "min/max" your drawing time, it'll just suck the fun out of the hobby and you'll just resent drawing. Practice if you feel like it, draw for fun if you feel like it.

How can I incorporate the things I like about others' art into my own? Do I just straight up try to copy them?

Yes! Copy the shit out of them, contrary to what some artists will say, having eyes and using them to look at art isn't "stealing" it. All art is inspired by previous art, no one makes things up out of whole cloth. Just wear your references on your sleeve, don't copy or trace someone else's work and pretend you came up with it yourself, just be honest. Tracing someone else's work is a great way to learn how they did it.

Usually when I'm trying to learn someone else's style, I'll start by tracing a picture I like, learning how and why they drew things in that way, and learning how I can adjust the way I do things to make it look more like theirs, as well as learning which parts of their art that don't really work, the little mistakes and errors (and every artist makes them!). Then, I'll use a picture as a reference to make sure I understand how their style works, sometimes it takes a while, but I can eventually get a passable imitation of their style and can then incorporate it into my own work.

Some people I've asked irl have said it's just a matter of time. I haven't been creating long enough to be good yet. Is there any truth to this? Am I just impatient?

Two years and you're not a master of the craft yet! You're fine. I've been drawing art for over a decade, half of that professionally, and my stuff still looks like garbage. It's more about mindset than it is about "getting good." There's a really cool feeling you get from learning art where you'll be able to just...draw things you couldn't before, you'll know how to do something you previously had no idea how to do. It's the most satisfying part about learning a hobby in my opinion. And in turn, you will have times (sometimes years) where it feels like you're not improving at all, that's normal and nothing to be worried about (even if it does suck while you're going through those times).

Just keep drawing and you'll get better, the more time you spend actively trying to practice the faster you will improve, but the less fun you'll be having. Just go at your own pace and do what feels comfortable, which is another thing that unfortunately takes practice to learn how to do, you've just got to figure out what works for you.

I would not recommend becoming a professional artist as a job though, it really does suck the enthusiasm out of the hobby and the pay is terrible. I'm an artist because I couldn't really survive doing anything else, not because it's a "dream job" or anything. Like any job under capital, it is just draining and soul crushing. As a hobby it can be really rewarding though.

I like how the first one sort of looks like fingers but there's no hands. I don't know anything about art but I think they're pretty okay 👍

If you aren't doing this for money then the most important thing is to have fun!

all art is lying and saying you meant to do that, otherwise nobody would ever be finished making anything.

I like that screaming skull thing

Your works aren't bad. You'll quickly learn that asking for input like this on the internet isn't a great idea, as a lot of people can't really discern between alright, good, great, masterful, etc. There's either good or bad. I've seen this work to some artists' advantage, where they're pretty successful on social media, despite not really being that great. It turns out that the average person isn't that discerning. It's helpful to get your work from being bad to good, but since your work is already passable, it gets harder. Also, keep in mind that a lot of people's idea of good art is based on whether or not they think they could have created that same thing. You must be careful not to listen to such people.

Anyways, you're not crazy to think that your work could be coming up to a higher level. The good news is that the fact you can even detect that possibility usually means you have the capability of getting there. You can look at some of Jean Giraud (Moebius) abstract works for reference of how this sort of thing is done in a cleaner more orderly style. And of course Basquiat would be a good reference if you want to lean into the dirtier chaotic style. But regardless of direction, we can make some observations:

1. Your lines could be more confident, you are "petting" them too much still in some places. Notice the confident, steady lines that only waver or change convexity/concavity intentionally here: https://pin.it/58POenjTv . Even Basquiat, which you might expect to do otherwise, take a look: https://pin.it/4OWMkZcm6 Really every line in there is confident and decisive. Even the scribbles are tightly confined to their intentional regions.

2. You would benefit immensely from a better ability to draw in perspective, with dimension, etc. The lines and spiderwebs on the second to last piece, for example, only roughly match the implied 3D form, so it ends up looking sketchy. Basquiat is more pictographic, iconic, and thus can tolerate a more 2D and perspectiveless approach. This is made workable by avoiding patterns that we would expect to conform to perspective (like your grids, stripes, webs, etc) and mostly sticking with block color and symbols (think the famous crown, stars, etc.), and if there are patterns, we see them from straight-ahead views. https://pin.it/17eJNORyh Moebius has deep mastery of perspective from drawing traditional comic strips, and therefore his style can lean into that with highlights and stripes in physically correct places. https://pin.it/5mdD43Z5e You could go in either direction or some mixture of both, just make sure you understand what makes each work.

3. It may be worth trying a workflow where you do the initial sketch in a very light pencil to explore and find your forms, and then confidently ink in the final lines, scribbles, crosshatching, etc. This would probably help give you better composition too, while also helping with the previous improvements.

In general, you ought to look around for artists whose work you really like - They don't even need to look like your work, but maybe it just has something particular about it that you like, like the line control or the shading or even just the conceptual content of what is being depicted. Then you want to play a compare and contrast game between your art and theirs and see what parts can you borrow or learn from that aren't being used in your work. Then you try that out in a piece and if you find that it doesn't fit or you don't like it then you can always try something else. But you will learn from it either way!

::: spoiler Let me show you some of my artworks: :::

There's lack of depth to them. It's possible to tell I lack confidence by the way the brushwork is done. There's a very noticeable lack of depth and especially the Monotone one is really suffering for how flat it looks, it could have bene improved by adjusting the direction of the "hatching". It's possible to tell that I am either lazy or rushing in a lot of places too. Like how poorly the grass is drawn in one of them.

It's important to keep in mind what kind of community you're sharing your art with, when you look for feedback. It's very easy to get torn into shreds by fellow artists, if you do not, then you're probably not interacting with artists. Pretty much everyone can tear each other into shreds no matter how beautiful your art piece is. It's also very easy to get showered with compliments, if you stick to fandom communities.

Why do you want to do art? Getting good enough isn't an issue, you can do that with practice, the problem is - what's your goal? If you spend your time building fundamentals following the steps you've been suggested, but your goal is to be "popular" it'll help you, but even someone as terrible as myself could be popular with a focus on marketability and communication skills. Similarly I could feel "at home" surrounded by masters, who enjoy telling me how dog poopoo my art is, and then seeing me apply their lessons in my work.

I don't think there's any correct path, artists who claim that (imho) have an insecurity problem. I also personally wouldn't take advice from someone like me, there's a ton I still need to work on myself and I wish you good luck on your own journey.

-What should I spend my extremely limited practice time on?

Early on, anything, just be consistent. Get a feel for your materials and experiment with different line weight, grips, techniques.

-How can I incorporate the things I like about others' art into my own? Do I just straight up try to copy them?

Yes. For hundreds of years directly copying famous works was a pillar of artists' practice.

-Some people I've asked irl have said it's just a matter of time. I haven't been creating long enough to be good yet. Is there any truth to this? Am I just impatient?

It does take time and there aren't really shortcuts, (although there are better and worse ways to practice) but you will get better and you will notice

I also highly recommend drawing from life for basically anyone. It's extremely valuable because it teaches you how to see what things actually look like and then how elements create an image. You might not use rendering a realistic apple in abstract art, but you will use the principles necessary to do so.

fwiw I like your drawings and don't think they are necessarily "unfinished," though I wonder if the less abstract figures might benefit from shading to give them more depth.

I think it could be the "problem" that because you have an ambling approach but still want things to feel "finished" that you don't have any clear definition to yourself of what them being "finished" would look like, and that's not a matter of an external criterion, it's a matter of your own sensibilities, and of saying to yourself "I want it to have these kinds of features and that's it." What the specific list of features is is up to you.

Adding more details absolutely will fuck up some of your drawings, but you probably know from experience that that's part of the process of learning to add details without fucking up drawings in the future. Not everything will be a nice presentable product, some of it will look like dogshit because messing up is integral to learning how to not mess up.

Edit: disclaimer, I'm not an artist, I'm just some philistine giving opinions

Try making copies of ones you like and coloring them. Even just a little. Try some watercolor, or whatever is on hand.

Get a pack of cheap frames and try framing a few. Putting a frame on something can like really punch up how something appears. Sometimes a frame is all that's needed to feel "finished."

If you wanna get "better," study anatomy, draw bones, muscles. Draw bodies. Draw portraits. Look at art and watch some videos. Work bigger.

Personally, idrc if something looks funky or off. I kinda prefer a funky portrait or abstract done with love and concentration and time, over some shitty ai glowing full color rendering. My fav kind of art is like "outsider art" where the person was just making shit all the time, expressing themselves, technical stuff doesn't matter, they did it out of love or habit.

Personally, I really like your drawings! I'd love to have one framed. If you never studied anatomy or whatever, and kept doodling, sketching, working stuff out, that would be very cool and admirable. Most people don't have time or energy for what it takes to be a "real" artist. Shit is so fucking gatekept its insane. Just make stuff cuz it feels good and you're left with something you can look back on. Your art is 1000% valid, and you don't need approval from some bourgeois art critic or buyer.

Idk nuffin about art but i like what im looking at

I think these are pretty cool abstract drawings. Some ways to make them feel more finished may be adding color or texture, or maybe reproducing them on higher quality paper or canvas?

Why do you say you can tell you're shit at art?

wdym this is cool!